One day, no doubt, Leszczynski would get purged. Bokov was sure of it. Maybe the proud Pole knew it, too. But they were on the same side now.
“These damned Werewolves are driving us nuts,” Leszczynski said. Bokov was highly fluent in German; he’d studied it for years. Leszczynski spoke it like a native. Before the war, he’d likely used it as much as Polish. The Poles might hate and fear their western neighbors, but they leaned toward them as if drawn by a magnet. In Russian, a traveling fort with a cannon in the turret was a tank, as it was in English. The Poles borrowed pancer from the Germans.
“We’ll deal with them. One way or another, we will,” Bokov said confidently.
“Jawohl. Aber naturlich.” Irony filled Captain Leszczynski’s voice. Poles didn’t like Russians much better than they liked Germans. They looked down their noses at Russians, though, and hardly bothered to hide it. So did Germans, of course. It was almost less annoying from them than from fellow Slavs.
“We will,” Bokov insisted. “If we have to kill them all, we’ll do that.”
“Hmm. Well, maybe.” Captain Leszczynski seemed to be reminding himself they were allies here. “Which prisoners will you want to interrogate?”
“The ones you think likeliest to know something about Comrade Pietruszka’s murder,” Bokov answered. Before the Pole could say anything, he added, “The ones who hate us worst.”
“Oh, they all hate us,” Leszczynski said. “The only question is, which ones did something about it?”
Adrian Marwede said he’d been a Wehrmacht noncom. He still wore a ratty field-gray service blouse. Bokov eyed a slightly darker ring on the left sleeve near the cuff: the sort of ring a cloth cuff-title might leave after it was removed. Only a few Wehrmacht divisions used cuff-titles. However…“You were really in the Waffen-SS, nicht wahr?” All their outfits had them.
Marwede turned pale. “Well-yes,” he muttered.
But then Captain Leszczynski took Bokov aside. “When Breslau surrendered, all the defenders were promised life, personal property, and eventual return to Germany-the SS included.”
“What?” Bokov couldn’t believe it. “Who made such an idiotic promise?”
With a certain somber relish, the Pole replied, “Lieutenant General Gluzdovsky, commander, Soviet Sixth Army, First Ukrainian Front.”
Bokov gave him a dirty look. The truth could be far more irritating than any lie. “All right, I won’t knock him around for being an SS swine,” the NKVD man said. “I’ll knock him around because he may know something about what happened to Pietruszka. Does that make you happy?”
“Pietruszka was a solid man,” Leszczynski said, which could have meant anything.
Whatever it meant, Bokov could worry about it later. He turned back to Adrian Marwede. “So, SS man…” he said, and watched Marwede flinch. In a Russian’s mouth, that was all too likely a death sentence in and of itself. Bokov let him stew for a few seconds, then asked, “What do you know about Reinhard Heydrich, SS man?”
“He’s supposed to be a tough bastard.” Marwede sounded less impressed than he might have. He explained why as he went on, “How tough can you be when you hardly ever get near the front?”
Captain Bokov didn’t care whether Heydrich was personally brave. Things he’d heard made him think Heydrich was, but it didn’t matter one way or the other. The man was a goddamn nuisance-worse than a goddamn nuisance-and needed suppressing. “What do you know about what Heydrich’s up to, SS man?”
“What? You think the Reichsprotektor talks to the likes of me?” Marwede raised an eyebrow.
Without changing expression, Bokov slapped him across the face, forehand and backhand. That was good technique; not only did it hurt, it humiliated. The German staggered. “Don’t screw around with me,” Bokov said evenly. “Tell me what I want to know, and don’t give me any shit. You answer another question with a question and what happens next’ll make that look like a love tap. Get me?”
Marwede spat-spat red, in fact. He nodded gingerly. “Yes, I get you.”
He got that his life lay in an NKVD officer’s cupped palm. Well, what else did he need to get? If Bokov decided to squeeze…“What do you know about what Heydrich’s up to?”
“Not much.” Hastily, Marwede went on, “Nobody up at the front ever found out much of what he was up to. All we knew was, there were times we couldn’t get the guns or the ammo we needed. When that happened, people would swear at Heydrich. He was squirreling the stuff away, or guys said he was.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Captain Leszczynski remarked.
“So have I,” Bokov said. He knew why, too: it was true. He also knew why Heydrich was squirreling that stuff away-to do just what he and his merry thugs were doing now. The Russian eyed Marwede. “What else do you know? What else have you heard?”
“Well…nothing I can prove,” Marwede said. Bokov gestured impatiently. The German continued, “Sometimes guys’d go back with light wounds, things that wouldn’t keep them out of action more than two, three weeks, tops. Only they wouldn’t come to the front again when they should’ve healed up. That’d drive our officers crazy.”
“What happened to them?” Bokov asked. “And don’t tell me you don’t know, either. You Fritzes have paperwork coming out your assholes. I’ve never seen people for paperwork like Germans. If you wanted to find out where these troops were, you could.”
Marwede held up his right hand with index and middle fingers raised together: the gesture Germans used when they were swearing an oath. “Honest to God, I don’t know. Our officers couldn’t track those guys. It was like they fell off the face of the earth. They just disappeared. Nobody knew where. Nobody could find out where. People said Heydrich had ’em. I don’t know if he did, but people said so.”
“I’ve heard that before, too,” Leszczynski said.
“Me, too,” Bokov agreed. He glowered at the SS man. “When did this start happening?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Marwede set himself for another blow. When it didn’t come, he continued, “First couple of people I can remember disappearing like that were right after Kursk, I think.”
“Fuck your mother!” Bokov exclaimed in Russian. Marwede scowled; he must have learned what that meant. The NKVD man didn’t care. If the Germans had started collecting holdouts as early as the summer of 1943…they’d have a devil of a lot of them, and the bastards could raise all kinds of hell. Which, when you got right down to it, was nothing he didn’t know already.
“That I hadn’t heard,” Captain Leszczynski said with calm either commendable or excessive, depending on how you looked at things.
“Neither had I. As far as I know, nobody’s heard that before,” Bokov said. He wanted to slap the SS man around for no better reason than giving him bad news. The look he gave Marwede should have knocked him over by itself. “Listen, cuntface, if you’re lying to me just to make me trip over my own dick, I’ll hunt you down and cut your balls off and stuff ’em down your throat.”
He wasn’t lying. Adrian Marwede had the sense to realize as much. “Not me,” he said, using that oath-taking gesture again. “I’ve done plenty of stupid things, but I’m not dumb enough to screw around with the NKVD.”
So he recognized the collar tabs and cap, did he? That was interesting. “You were dumb enough to join the SS,” Bokov growled. “You’re dumb enough for anything.” 1943? Summer 1943? Bozhemoi!
VI
The Indiana state Capitol was one impressive building. Diana McGraw had never seen it before, not in person, even though Anderson was only about twenty miles outside of Indianapolis. A housewife in a suburban town didn’t need to hobnob with state legislators. But, since she’d already seen her Congressman, the idea of coming here intimidated her less than it would have before.